As a school-girl in Fenham in the "30's Irene must have been very good at Maths and her working life was based around her ability to handle numbers. She must have left school and taken a job at fourteen but the Second World War began in 1939 when she was only twelve. Along with many other children from Tyneside she was evacuated to Cumbria. She hated it. Her brothers were already in the Armed Forces and she was separated from her only sister, Lillian. That was bad enough but suffering from scarlet Fever, which happened while she was evacuated, was much, much worse. In her young head the Germans were blamed for less for the less bombs they dropped and more for the fact that she caught Scarlet Fever. She stuck to that tale throught her life and it became a standing joke in the family.